Mary Hopkins served as
a consultant for the new PBS show History Detectives. She is
pictured here with a printout from a thin-section analysis.

July 15, 2002 -- Mary Hopkins
is a Library Assistant in the Spanish/Portuguese Division of HCL Technical Services
… by day. She is also an anthropologist, an expert on ceramics and clays
from Teotihuacan, Mexico, and recently a consultant for the new PBS program
History Detectives. The show searches out the true facts behind local
folklore, family legends, and interesting objects, and the pilot episode, featuring
Hopkins, airs Monday, July 14, at 8pm on Channel 2 and will be rebroadcast on
channel 44 on Tuesday, July 15, at 3am and 5 pm.

One of the three mysteries in the hour-long program concerns a small figurine
head found on a beach in New Jersey. During the preliminary "investigation"
by the history detective team, Hopkins was contacted to help them identify the
origin of the object. The team already suspected that it might be from Teotihuacan.
Hopkins’ doctoral dissertation dealt with cooking pots from the Teotihuacan
archeological site and she had studied both modern potters' clays and clays
of ancient ceramics from that area.

"I was asked to confirm that the figurine was from Teotihuacan. I spent
a few days at home with my microscope, conducting thin-section analysis. I studied
a sliver of the ceramic, looking at sand grains included in the clay, at the
texture and color, and how the potters handled it. I then compared these findings
to some samples of Teotihuacan ceramics," said Hopkins.

The team needed the results quickly, and therefore there was not enough time
for Hopkins to do a chemical test that would have given a definitive answer
on the birthplace of the object. But, having analyzed hundreds of samples from
Teotihuacan in the past, she felt confident saying that the ceramic figurine
was from this area or an extremely similar geological location.

Hopkins was filmed sitting at a microscope and explaining how details in the
thin-section of ceramic indicated that the piece was from Teotihuacun and what
these details said about how the piece had been made.

She has not seen a tape of the program, so how much footage of her interview
is used is to be seen – stay tuned.